Birth of an Age (Christ Clone Trilogy) (Mass Market Paperback)

Mix one part science, add in Scriptures, toss in some fantastic as well as some lousy science fiction, bake in an overheated New Age oven, cool quickly with religious and science fiction speculation, and ice with prophesies. Voila! You have this most unusual book.

The first half of this book has some of the most interesting science fiction that I have read in many years.

On the other hand, you may find the characters to be underdeveloped, the emphasis on the horrible aspects of the book of Revelation to be upsetting, the story to be blasphemous from the point of view of your religious beliefs, and the plot too disconnected from likely events to be credible. If I were only grading this novel for originality, I would suggest that it was worth more than five stars. Mr. BeauSeigneur has an amazing mind for integrating bits and pieces from disparate sources into original stories.

The book opens with the final chapter of In His Image for the purposes of continuity. The story in this book revolves around the conflicts between those trying to birth a new age of human spiritual evolution and those who wish to retain the current state of affairs. The conflict plays itself out in scenes of horror beyond anything you have probably encountered. As in In His Image, the book ends in a cliffhanger that will keep you focused on reading the third part of the trilogy. Frankly, I had no idea of what was coming next when I read this book. After you make it this far, you'll be hooked on wanting to read the third book in the trilogy.

The story is exceptionally fast-paced, cutting quickly from one action element in a story line to the next. I found myself sitting up late to finish it, turning pages rapidly in my urgency to find out what will happen next.

As you are aware, I'm sure, having lots of action means giving up other things. In this case, lots of characters and plot complications means that you do not spend much time with any characters but two. Only one of these seems to get decent development. Many are deliberately shrouded in mystery. Since I love character development, that made the plot less interesting for me. If you like action, it will make the plot more interesting for you. In fact, this book would be rated well above five stars by those who adore fast-moving plots.

As I mentioned above, this book is the second in a series called "The Christ Clone Trilogy." From that title you can see that the story will probably parallel the life of Jesus in important ways, but there is far less of that than you might imagine. In fact, if the book had hewn closer to a Christian theme, I suspect that I would have enjoyed it more. On the other hand, by not doing so, this book is clearly more accessible and appealing to people of all faiths and beliefs. So it is very democratic in that way.

There is a serious side to the book in that it realistically portrays the natural dangers to life on earth. Anyone who reads this book will end up thinking quite a lot about what needs to be done to make the world better able to protect itself from the most severe natural risks. That's a remarkably worthwhile lesson to get from an action novel.

What can you do to help with the issues of making this a safer world for every one in it?

Live with love and hope in your heart, and share them with all you meet!